At Isleworth Town we want every child to be successful, fluent readers and writers. We believe that this is achievable through a combination of strong, high quality, discrete daily phonics teaching combined with regular, daily opportunities for developing reading skills and a whole language approach that promotes a love of reading. The teaching of phonics is the key strategy used to teach children to read, write and spell.  At Isleworth Town we follow ‘Essential Letters and Sounds’ (ELS) which is a systematic and synthetic phonics programme, validated by the DfE in 2021, which focuses on the teaching of new sounds to graphemes and the application of these in reading and writing. We teach phonics in the Nursery and from the very start of Reception and follow the ELS progression of teaching phonics which ensures children are mastering phonics to read and spell as they progress throughout school.